Crock-Pot Mishap ~ Camera Mishap

Wednesdays are days where the crock-pot is in charge of dinner. When things are running smoothly (giggle!) and things are as they should be (snort!) the week look something like this: Monday is Orion's day, Tuesday is my day, Wednesday belongs to the crock-pot, Thursday is whatever (I'm bowling and don't care what or if the boys eat!), Friday and Saturday are John's days (but not always), and Sunday it's back to me. I had rather hoped that the boys would take pity and man crock-pot Wednesday, but alas, I am still hoping. Last week's Lemon Chicken was rather tasty. And while tonight's dinner was edible, I was almost glad the camera wasn't working.

When I began experimenting with the crock-pot years ago, I seemed to have more misses than hits. But after reading several cookbooks and blogs as well as chatting with friends who know and love their crock-pots, I have found that I now have more hits than misses. And I am not quite certain how to classify tonight's dinner.

This afternoon I thought I would give Mongolian Beef a try. I visited Crock-Pot 365 and Recipe Zaar and looked at both of their Mongolian Beef Recipes. How could I go wrong with ginger, garlic, soy, wine, and chicken broth? Right? Well, to start, I dusted the meat in too much corn starch (I'll omit that entirely next time!), and secondly, I used a 3.5 quart crock-pot instead of the larger one. It smelled great. And tasted fine. But looked like something from the black lagoon. Really! (Again, grateful for not having a camera to blog my shame!)

I think I'll retry the recipe, but not any time soon. And as for the left overs, I am not certain what to do with them. But I'm sure I'll come up with something.

Now then, you may wonder about the Camera Mishap part of this post. Sunday I went out with Orion and Shannon to bike for a bit. I took the camera for the sole purpose of snapping picture of my bike and hopefully getting one of my bicycle mates to snap one of me and my baby to share with you! The camera dropped (crash!) and it's toast. We've had the camera for a decade or more (it's a Cannon Cool Pix 4.3 and it has been dropped many times before, but its number was up!). I am hoping to send it off and have it fixed. ~Sob~ I suppose I could dust off my old Cannon AE-1, but just the cost of printing gives me the willies.